1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates generally to delay-lock loop (DLL) circuits, and in particular, to the DLL discriminator function in Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) communications systems receivers.
2. Description of Related Art
Global Positioning Navigation (GPS) is a satellite based navigation system having a space segment of a constellation of about 24 GPS satellites. Each satellite broadcasts ranging signals and navigation data on two frequencies. For non-military Standard Positioning Service (SPS) operation modes, GPS signals are broadcast on a carrier frequency L1. (1575.42 MHz) modulated by navigation data and course/acquisition (C/A) code. Navigation data contains orbit information about the satellite that may be used to compute the satellite's position and velocity by a GPS receiver. GPS is a Code Division Multiple Access (CDMA) system and, therefore, uses C/A codes as pseudorandom number (PRN) codes to identify a particular satellite's signals, even though different satellites share the same L1 frequency band. After obtaining GPS range measurements from at least four satellites, the GPS receiver can solve for four unknowns, including its 3-dimensional position and time.
In a typical GPS receiver, a GPS antenna receives signals from all visible GPS satellites. The signals are filtered, amplified, down-converted, and digitized by the receiver's radio frequency (RF) front end. The RF front end sends its output, i.e., digital intermediate frequency (IF) signals to the receiver's baseband digital signal processing (DSP) unit. The DSP unit processes each individual satellite's signals in different channels. One channel is responsible for acquiring and tracking a satellite, demodulating navigation data, and delivering GPS measurements. All channels send their measurements of all visible satellites to a positioning and navigation unit, which finally computes the user receiver's position and time.
In each receiver channel, tracking loops are used to track received satellite signals. Receiver tracking loops consist of a carrier tracking loop which tracks the received carrier and a code tracking loop which tracks the received C/A code. A code tracking loop may be implemented using a delay lock loop (DLL). Delay-lock loops include a DLL discriminator function to calculate code phase tracking error. However, code phase error results using some well-known DLL discriminator functions, such as early-minus-late (EML) method, are dependent on an estimation of the noise floor, which becomes more critical for the case of tracking weak signals. If the noise floor cannot be accurately estimated, the resulting range measurements will also be inaccurate.
It would be desirable to implement a DLL discriminator that is not dependent on any noise floor estimation.